Second display disappears
 

System Info:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
AMD Phenom 2.20GHz Quad Core
8GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 9300GE

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I have been using two eVGA UV16+ devices for some time now under Vista, with very few issues. The nVidia 9300 GE is the only video card in the system.

I just loaded Windows 7 Ultimate (retail version) onto my HP m9517c last night and all was well until about 20 minutes after the upgrade was complete and I was actually using the system.

Now, after about 20 minutes of use, the first of the two monitors attached to a UV16+ just goes dark. It behaves as though it's asleep, even though I've had all power management on these monitors turned off for a long time, and I double checked and it's still turned off. The system thinks that the monitor is still there in Control Panel, the mouse will disappear when I move it to that monitor, and the app I had open on that screen goes back to that screen if I close it and re-open it, as though it's displaying just fine. The only way to recover from this that I've found is to completely re-install the driver. One other thing I've noticed is that when the screen goes dark, my CPU utilization goes through the roof across all four cores, maintaining an average of 90%+ for more than an hour (I finally got tired of waiting for it and rebooted last time, it may have kept going if I'd let it).

I've noticed from the other forum entries that this driver seems to be particularly unstable, and if that's all this is, I can wait for awhile, but the dearth of responses from any forum mods or DisplayLink folks makes me wonder if anyone's really listening? I have far more obscure technology attached to this PC and it loaded with zero issues under Win7 and is functioning just fine. Is there a major update coming soon to the 5.2 driver release that fixes these bugs or are we just taking baby steps along the way?

I love this product, it has served me very, very well in expanding my viewable work space from 2 to 4 monitors, but not being further along on Win7 development (considering it's been out there for what seems like forever) is a little disappointing.

What can we expect to see in the near future?

Hi,

To help me diagnose this, could you please tell me which process is using all the cpu?

The 5.2 product release is due in a couple of days and this has a large number of changes. Please keep me updated with your experience and I'll try to resolve your issue as quickly as possible.

Martin.
DisplayLink

Martin:

First, thanks for the response. I truly appreciate it!

Yours is the $64K question, as I noticed today some more details to the behavior.

I had some other issues, so I decided to bite the bullet and do a fresh install of Win7, hoping that would take care of the DisplayLink issues as well. Unfortunately, it didn't. The adapters were recognized properly, the 5.2 driver installed, and for about 20 minutes both displays on the eVGA devices worked great. Then one just went dark. The system thinks its still there, but it shows nothing. CPU utilization spiked to 100%.

I was installing some other software when this happened, so I when I opened Task Manager, I expected to see the DisplayLink software chugging through cycles and the install to be eating everything else (the system was at about 20% utilization before the display went dark). What surprised me was that it's the System Idle Process eating 80%-85% of the CPU, and the DisplayLink UI is idle. The software install was still eating 15%-20%, but now the System Idle is through the roof, and overall CPU utilization is pegged (bear in mind I'm watching processes from all users and I'm the only user logged in). About 10 minutes after the first display went dark, the second did the same thing.

I disconnected both of my eVGA adapters and reconnected them with no change.

It looks like some kind of resource isn't getting returned properly, and even though the system thinks it's a system idle process, it's consuming cycles somehow.

If there's some kind of log I can get you, or other info that would be helpful, let me know. I've gotten used to 4 displays when I'm troubleshooting remote server issues, and not having these work stinks. I love this product, so whatever I can do to help troubleshoot it let me know.

Thanks!

Hi,

Thanks for the update. The System Idle Process isn't really a process using up the CPU, it really just shows you the unused cpu percentage (see attached pic). There are some more logs I could use though in C:\Program Files\DisplayLink Core Software\Debug\. If you could copy and zip up the folder as soon as the first display stops working, I should be able to investigate it.

If you post a pic (or two) of the task manager as well, I'll check to see if the displaylink processes are up to no good.

Also, knowing which nVidia driver version you have installed for the 9300 may be useful. To find it, go to Device Manager, expand the Display adapters tree, right click on the device you see there and click properties. Then navigate to the driver tab, where you will see a Driver Version number.


Best regards,
Martin

I know System Idle isn't really a process that consumes resources BUT, if a thread or a process doesn't close out properly or goes rogue, it CAN show up as if it is. I'll try to explain what I'm experiencing.

Right now I'm in the process of installing several Adobe products. My System Idle shows to be roughly 84%. My overall CPU utilization shows to be 16%, which is normal behavior. Nothing going crazy.

After a display goes black when attached to the eVGA adapter running the 5.2 DisplayLink driver, my System Idle immediately shows 90%+, AND my overall CPU utilization shows 90%-100%, with no other processes getting anything but 1%-2%, none of which is the DsiplayLink UI (the only process I could immediately find that was tied to DisplayLink. That is NOT normal behavior in all the years I've worked with Windows. System Idle should always be the remainder of 100 - All running CPU cycles. When the 5.2 driver dies, that's no longer the case.

That says to me that when the display goes black, the driver has attempted to do something or done something it shouldn't have, and is not being taken out of the resource pool without a fight, so to speak, and is being tagged as sys idle, when in fact it is NOT.

I've disconnected both my displays at the moment so I can finish my system rebuild without more hiccups, so once I get that done I'll reconnect and get you a screen shot of what I'm talking about.

I'll also get you the log files. The nvidia 9300 is using driver version 8.16.11.9107 from 9/27/2009. This is the most updated Win7 installation driver, I believe.

Thanks!!!!

This time I got things to work for a couple of hours, but it ended up in the same result.

Attached is everything from the dump folder. All but one file shows the last activity as 2:42, but one shows 6:28, which is about the time it crashed on me.

I've also attached a couple of screen shots of the Task Manager. As you can see, total CPU usage is reflecting what is in the System Idle Process in the After screen shots, but clearly not the Before.

Let me know what other info I can get you.

Martin:

Another update. I plugged in just one of the displays this afternoon to try and get something done, and less than 5 minutes after plugging it in, the display went dark on me and my CPU usage skyrocketed.

I've attached the debug folder (the files updated almost immediately this time) as well as a screenshot.

Thanks!

Thanks for the logs. I can see that the usb device is reporting errors, but the logging level is perhaps not high enough to get anything informative. I'm going to get back to you tomorrow with some information on how we can gather more descriptive logs. Unfortunately, this is also an area I'm not too familiar with, so I'll have to raise a bug and keep an eye on it for you.

Martin.

Thanks for the update, Martin; I've been away on business so I just saw this. I'd noticed a lot of errors in the logs as well, but none of them really made any sense to me, either, as this isn't something I spend a lot of my time doing.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do on my end to get you more information. I'm really wanting to get back to my four displays.

Thanks!

Hi,

Have you had a chance to try the product release available from WU? It seems that I cannot get people to look at it when it's from the RC.

If you are still seeing the problem, merge the attached registry file, which will increase the verbosity of the logging. Once you've done that, reboot and wait until the problem occurs. Then, zip up all the logs from c:\program files\displaylink core software\debug and upload them here.

Thanks,
Martin.

I'm hazarding a guess here, but it may not be that people don't want to try it, but that it isn't there.

I've been anxiously awaiting the released driver ever since I saw posts about it being released to WU, and nothing has shown up in WU for me related to DisplayLink (although when I first installed Win7 it immediately found the RC driver).

Also, the reg entry doesn't seem to be attached to the post. Can I download the new driver directly?

I don't know if this thread or forum is even being monitored anymore, since the driver is supposedly "production", but the problems are persistent on my machine.

The new driver never showed up in WindowsUpdate OR via the Check for updates option of the DisplayLink Manager, so I downloaded the driver manually and installed.

The CPU problem is not nearly as pronounced in this version of the driver, but it is still there. Instead of reporting ALL of the System Idle Process as active CPU cycles and slowing my machine to a crawl, it only shows about 1/2 of the CPU being utilized, when in reality only about 10% is and the other 90% is SIP. Still extremely strange behavior, and it indicates to me that when the driver fails it is not releasing resources back properly and it hangs in some "shutdown" process or other.

Both displays still disappear after about 10 minutes or so of use. On top of that, it now causes my primary displays running off my nVidia 9300 card to get very fuzzy after the DisplayLinks fail. Very strange behavior.

I'm afraid if this doesn't get resolved soon I may have to dump these in favor of a second video card to get all my displays running. Very disappointing. This device had a lot of promise for many users I support, but this kind of instability just doesn't leave me with a lot of confidence.

Martin, if you're still watching, and want me to try something, let me know. I'm happy to try and continue troubleshooting this with you guys.

Exactly the same problem!
 

I have the same problem with disappearing displays and high CPU usage after some time.

I seemed to have found a solution with the 191 Nvidia driver and the latest displaylink driver, but all of a sudden it stopped working and I'm back to random lockups with 90% cpu usage. Fortunately, there is no loss of work, but I do need to reboot to use the PC properly.

I was also getting bsod's but that stopped after I upgraded the nvidia driver. Any other tips or suggestions.

(I have a nvidia geforce 9100 graphics "card")

I'm pretty sure no one at DisplayLink cares about this anymore. They have a production driver, so it's of no consequence. Of course, the fact that their product doesn't work under Win7 when it worked PERFECTLY for me under Vista means I'll be trying to get MicroCenter to take both devices back and getting a second card.

I'm extremely disappointed in the level of customer service provided here. It looked like things were going to go well, and then they just wiped their hands of the whole thing once the "production" driver went to Windows Update. I still have the same CPU issues I had with the beta driver, despite running the 191 nVidia driver and sending in logs and offering to do more testing. Unfortunately, eVGA is just as clueless and unresponsive.

I was considering moving to the nVidia beta 195 driver, but I really need to get my four monitor setup working again and don't really have the time to keep messing with it.

Make sure you post back here if you find a solution. If I keep messing with it and find one, I'll do the same.

the 195 beta drivers make the problem worse.

my latest solution - so far working for 24 hrs - is:
1) disable the nvidia driver in Services
2) edit the registry to TdrLevel 0 (google for details)

using the 191 driver and 5.2.21123.0 (beta) displaylink

I have a suspicion the problem lies in compatibility with nvidia graphics and displaylink. So, my next step is to try a different graphics card.

Appreciate your input and thoughts, since there doesn't seem to be many others with the same issue.

Hi,

First, I'd suggest downloading the most recent displaylink driver from our website (displaylink.com) as your version seems to be quite old to me.

What precisely is getting worse in the 195 drivers, and can you post screenshots/logs that might help us to understand the problem?

Thanks,
Martin.

Same problem
 

I have the same problem as the other guys in this thread.

Although I know that I have installed all the latest drivers for my comp...

Don't know if it will help but I attached a zip of my debug folder at the time when the flicker and fuzzy started.

My host system is also windows 7, so there are probably som software problem with this windows version.

I don't have a TdrLevel reg entry anywhere in my registry, so I'm not sure that's going to help me any.

I also just noticed that there was a release of a driver yesterday, so I downloaded and installed it with no change to anything. I've attached the logs from the dump folder in case you can take a look at them, Martin. Thanks for jumping back into the thread.

Same/similar problem
 

Is there any movement on this?
I had a similar problem occasionally when running Vista with the mouse locking up when on a DislplayLink attached screen. I could live with that given what the product is doing through a USB port!
However, on Win 7 I'm getting lock ups on both my vga port attached screen and DisplayLink attached screen. The DisplayLink screen goes black. If I move the mouse over it, the screen redraws following the mouse trail. If I minimize then maximize any apps running on the DisplayLink screen the entire screen redraws.
This happens too often to make continued use of the product viable. Unfortunately, my options are limited as I use a notebook & therefore cannot install a secondary graphics card.

I'm not sure anyone cares. I continue to have the issue, even after a completely fresh install of Win7, the latest Nvidia drivers, and the latest DisplayLink drivers.

I will say with the latest driver it has gotten slightly better. I can get 25-30 minutes of display time before my CPU usage skyrockets and the display goes black, but that's it.